Cry the Beloved Country (1995)

December 15, 1995

FILM REVIEW;Searching for Answers in Yesterday's South Africa

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Published: December 15, 1995

The first major film to be made in the newly democratic South Africa, "Cry, the Beloved Country" carries a heavy sense of its own historic weight. Proclaimed "a monument to the future" by no less a figure than Nelson Mandela, the movie, directed by Darrell James Roodt, is an exercise in solemn uplift that is touching despite an atmosphere that at moments becomes stiflingly reverential.

In adapting Alan Paton's classic 1948 novel for the screen, Mr. Roodt, the young South African film maker who directed "Sarafina!," and his screenwriter, Ronald Harwood, have remained faithful to the hushed, semi-biblical tone of the book, while using the cinematography and music to add a romantic gloss.

As the camera drinks in the panoramic South African landscape of mist-shrouded mountains, the music by John Barry, who also scored "Out of Africa," swells with the same loftiness that infused the earlier film with a whiff of nobility. And the mingling of Mr. Barry's European-style music with fragments of Zulu hymns underscores the movie's dream of racial harmony.

But while the film, which is set in 1946, has glimpses of South African culture that suggest the mounting racial strife on the eve of apartheid, it is essentially an interior drama. The story traces the fearful odyssey of the Rev. Stephen Kumalo (James Earl Jones), a Zulu Anglican priest, from his countryside home to Johannesburg.

Once in the city, he discovers that his sister Gertrude (Dambisa Kente), with whom he had fallen out of touch, is a prostitute, and that his brother John (Charles S. Dutton) a political agitator, has lost his religious faith. Worse news follows. With the help of Msimangu (Vusi Kunene), a fellow priest, he tracks down his missing son Absalom (Eric Miyeni), who has just killed a man in a botched robbery attempt.

The victim, Arthur Jarvis, was a white man who had dedicated his life to helping South African blacks. Arthur was the son of James Jarvis (Richard Harris), a wealthy farmer and white supremacist who lives in the country near Kumalo. Reuniting with Absalom, Kumalo discovers that his son is not a coldblooded criminal but a lost, frightened man who acted out of fear. The young man is nevertheless tried for murder and sentenced to die. From their shared tragedy, the fathers of the killer and his victim eventually forge a deep and healing bond.

The screenplay, which uses a sparse voiceover narration by Mr. Jones, sticks so closely to the book that key passages of dialogue are kept entirely intact. And Mr. Jones and Mr. Harris deliver Paton's oratory with a subdued fervor that makes each word count. When Mr. Harris reads a posthumously discovered manuscript in which his son indicts white South Africa for its inhumanity to blacks, the words have the ring of an excoriating sermon.

The two central performances in the film, which opens today at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, are strikingly different in style. Mr. Jones's Kumalo is a sad, plodding bulldog of a man rumbling with suppressed thunder as he internalizes the onslaught of bad news, the weight of Job bowing his shoulders. Mr. Harris's Jarvis, alarmingly gaunt with yellowish white hair, trembling lips and an eagle's glare, is flamboyantly volatile, more so than in the book. Beneath the haughty aristocratic facade lies a spoiled, hot-tempered crybaby.

The film's turning point comes when Kumalo visits Jarvis and tremblingly reveals himself as the father of the younger Jarvis's killer. As the minister shakes with tears, Jarvis whirls on his heels, stricken, absorbing the shock, then swallowing his fury in a remarkable transformation. In a moment as transcendent as it is risky, the screen erupts with a volcanic emotion that cuts through the prevailing high-minded contemplation.

Why risky? Because movies have become so invested in the unleashing of violent emotion and the escalation of hostility, that expressions of restraint, reconciliation and forgiveness can easily be read as corny cop-outs. "Cry, the Beloved Country" is not corny, and it doesn't cop out.

"Cry, the Beloved Country" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has a scene in a brothel and some mild violence.

CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY Directed by Darrell James Roodt; written by Ronald Harwood, adapted from the novel by Alan Paton; director of photography, Paul Gilpin; edited by David Heitner; music by John Barry; production designer, David Barkham; produced by Anant Singh; released by Miramax Films. At Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, Broadway at 63d Street. Running time: 108 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.